EXCLUSIVE: With her time playing Eleven on the hit series Stranger Things coming to an end this year, Millie Bobby Brown looks to already found that next great character to play. Sources tell Deadline that the Emmy nominee is in final negotiations to star as Olympic champion gymnast Kerri Strug in Perfect. Gia Coppola is on board to direct the film, and while a deal isn’t closed, sources say Netflix is in negotiations to land the package.
Ronnie Sandahl is writing with Brown producing under her PMCA banner. Lead producers are Nik Bower for Riverstone Pictures and Thomas Benski for Magna Studios.
With the Strug story, Brown gets the opportunity to tackle not only one of the great Olympic stories of all time but one of the great sport stories of its era. A member of the 1996 USA gymnastics team dubbed “the Magnificent Seven,” Strug played a huge role in clinching the gold after performing the vault on a badly injured ankle. The image of her landing it perfectly and then having that ankle give out, only to have her coach carry her off the mat, is considered one of the more memorable moments in Olympic history. Sources say the plan is to shoot the movie next spring.
Ever since her breakout role in the first season of Stranger Things, Brown has done a good job of picking her non-Stranger Things projects, including her very successful Enola Holmes franchise, with the third film expected to bow sometime soon. With this project, she gets her first big chance to sink her teeth into something that could play for the awards crowd, similar to when Margot Robbie played Olympic skater Tonya Harding in I, Tonya.
RELATED: ‘Stranger Things 5’ Trailer Reveals Linda Hamilton In Explosive First Look That Signals Vecna’s Return
Next up for Brown is the final season of Stranger Things, which Netflix release over three volumes with the first set of episodes bowing over Thanksgiving weekend and the final episode bowing on New Year’s Eve. She also has Enola Holmes 3 and is about to start filming the Netflix pic Just Picture It opposite Gabriel LaBelle.
Coppola’s feature directorial debut Palo Alto premiered at the Telluride film festival and then played Venice and Toronto before its 2014 Tribeca Film release. She directed and co-wrote Mainstream, which premiered worldwide at the 2020 Venice Film Festival and played at the Telluride and Toronto. Her latest film, 2024’s The Last Showgirl, stars Pamela Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis and Dave Bautista and garnered Anderson a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Drama Motion Picture.
Brown is repped by WME and PCMA Management and Productions, and Coppola is repped by CAA and Untitled Entertainment.